WHY I AM USING GOOGLE DOCS.

I have long been a used of various office programs. I started with MS Office and, when I switched to Linux, I moved on to OpenOffice. They both are fine programs and do a great job at letting me create documents and spreadsheets. I always had elaborate spreadsheets calculating one thing or another, and they were immensely useful.

The problem, of course, was that I used several computers. Three at home, one laptop for going to work, and one work desktop. Keeping the files in sync was troublesome. I could never trust flash drives, because they go bad all the time. 

I had my documents under control of CVS (code versioning system), and, when I edited a document, I would "commit" it to CVS, and I would "update" documents prior to editing. It always worked, but it was cumbersome. 

The worst part of using the "one person edits a document" model, was that when someone else was editing or looking at the document, I had to hold off and we could not work on it simultaneously. Sharing by email gets tiring very fast. 

So, when I saw Google Docs, with its ability to see a single document across many computers, and the ability to share with other users, it was a godsend. I share documents with my wife, my coworkers, and so one. We can collaborate on them and see in real time. Also, I do not need any thumb drives to be carried around or use CVS, there is only one copy of the document in the cloud. 

The final plus of google docs is the real time stock quote function GoogleFinance. I use it to calculate the value of our stock holdings in almost real time. I have a big spreadsheet that calculates the current value of all my assets and liabilities, thanks  to the GoogleFinance function. Google docs has been a big time saver for me.